Starting Tuesday, February 27th, and for one Tuesday out of every month, 5 therapy dogs and their handlers will be coming here to Sahuaro during 5th and 6th periods. One of those dogs will be going to room 400 for the special education students since they are a smaller community, and the other 4 dogs will be going to the library for the rest of the students.

The person we have to thank for this new paw-ty at Sahuaro is Ms. Whitfield, the speech pathologist here at Sahuaro. This is a very new project that she has been wanting to implement here at school. She volunteers for the Humane Society and she fosters puppies and kittens, so she usually brings her foster puppies to school since they can’t be left alone. Students will see her bringing puppies to school and will get very excited and happy, and she realized it is great therapy for not just the students, but for the staff too. Ms. Whitfield said, “There’s just been a lot of tragedy – we’ve had a former student pass away and everyday stressors and dogs are a great comfort. So, I just thought that it would be a great way to, one, give back to our students and our staff, and two, it would help foster a better, healing environment for everyone.” 

The first hurdle that Ms. Whitfield encountered in the beginning stages of this project was trying to find an organization that was comfortable with coming into Sahuaro and would be willing to work with everyone. “That was what was really important to me, I wanted the entire school to be able to have the opportunity to work with therapy dogs,” she commented. 

A friend of Ms. Whitfield’s, who has a therapy dog, works with an organization called Comfort Therapy Dog Ministry, and they go to different schools with her therapy dog. Ms. Whitfield asked her friend if she would be willing to come into a high school and provide at least one therapy dog for the special education students and a couple of other dogs for everyone else. So her friend reached out to her team to see if they would be able to organize it, and the next day she let her know that they had the green light. They chatted back and forth and discussed what would work best. Ms. Whitfield had to write up a proposal that admin had to approve while keeping in mind all of the events taking place at Sahuaro during the second semester. 

Eventually, everyone agreed on a set plan. The set dates for the remainder of the 23-24 school year when the therapy dogs will be coming to Sahuaro are February 27th, March 26th, April 16th, and May 7th. Planning for the next school year has already begun. As previously mentioned, there are 5 dogs, one big dog, and four smaller dogs. In 5th and 6th period English classes, there will be a sign-up for students to be able to go to the library to see the dogs in the library. The dogs only work in hour-long segments, so 2 dogs will be available 5th period and the other two dogs will be available 6th period.

Thank you, Ms. Whitfield for working so hard to make sure that this project would come alive!  We are furr-ever grateful!